Ovidian Transversions: 'Iphis and Ianthe', 1300–1650 ed. by Valerie Traub, Patricia Badir, and Peggy McCracken

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ovidian Transversions: 'Iphis and Ianthe', 1300–1650 ed. by Valerie Traub, Patricia Badir, and Peggy McCracken A. E. Brown Traub, Valerie, Patricia Badir, and Peggy McCracken, eds, Ovidian Transversions: 'Iphis and Ianthe', 1300–1650, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2019; Ebook (ePub); pp. 344; R.R.P. £25.99; ISBN 9781474448925. Ovid's Metamorphoses was a staple educational text in premodern Europe, but there are distinct disparities as to which tales have attracted the most modern scholarly attention. Ovidian Transversions fills one significant gap, the lack of interest paid to the tale of Iphis and Ianthe. A particularly useful component of the book is the inclusion of appendices translating several versions into modern English, which will allow for comparative classroom use. However, I have reservations about the volume as a whole, due to its treatment of issues of gender and especially its negligent deployment of transgender theory. Valerie Traub, in her introduction, provides a thorough introduction to the tale of Iphis and Ianthe and to its premodern reception. She then sets the parameters for a capacious critical volume, offering the little-used term 'transversion' as an 'overarching rubric' for the tale's medieval and early modern reception. Her discussion of the analytical possibilities offered by the concepts trans, trans-, and trans* cites intra-community trans debates about orthography, but does not acknowledge trans people's specific, lived experience as something which produces the analytical perspective of trans studies. The publisher's copy blurb, in describing the volume's breadth as addressing 'gender and transgender, sexuality and gallantry, anatomy and alchemy, fable and history, youth and pedagogy, language and climate change', represents with unfortunate accuracy the volume's overall approach to 'transgender' as somehow distinct from 'gender'—a novel supplement, if not in actual opposition. The volume's consistent strength is in the historicist contributions, particularly those interested in scholastic context or in the generic context of particular adaptations. Katherine Eggert's essay on Galatea offers, in relation to the status of alchemy, the stimulating concept of 'disknowledge' as a framework approaching paradox. Kathleen Perry Long offers early modern French texts concerning intersex bodies as a context to Benserade's representation of Iphis's gender in his play Iphis et Iante (1634), while Susan Lanser's reading of 'sex, youth and modernity' in the same play places it in the context of comedies of misdirected love. Nevertheless, there are significant weaknesses in the treatment of medieval Iphis texts. Miranda Griffin's piece on Christine de Pisan's use of Iphis as a metaphor for the gender transition which the narrator asserts in widowhood is one of the stronger chapters. In addition to a detailed close reading of the Mutacion de Fortune, Griffin's work is the only contribution that foregrounds transgender experience and consistently deploys pronouns other than 'she' for a character (Christine-the-narrator) after a gender-transformative experience. However, Griffin's chapter shares with other essays a striking lack of engagement with the field of premodern trans studies. Essays in the medieval section do engage with [End Page 175] contemporary theoretical work, mostly from TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and with Robert Mill's work on medieval gender; but I believe Gabrielle Bychowski is the only trans scholar of premodern literature to be cited (although Blake Gutt contributed to one of the appendix translations; and of course, I may be unaware of some contributors or cited authors' specific identities). Moreover, Karma Lochrie's paraphrase of Bychowski's work misrepresents the latter's commentary on the lack of agency afforded to trans youth today, furnishing instead a claim about the 'medicalization' of children that echoes reactionary talking points. Given her earlier work questioning the hetero/homosexual binary, Lochrie's essay is also strikingly lacking in rigour in its engagement with gender. Speaking from my own standpoint as a nonbinary trans person, her offhand description of Ovid's androgynous Iphis as 'genuinely non-binary' was promising, but the essay (and indeed the book) exhibits no engagement with current nonbinary perspectives. At the time this book went to press, 'nonbinary' was well established as a term, and perhaps the only uniting feature among the nonbinary community is agreement that physical features read...